Abdellah El Asely

We had an amazing trip to Morocco, in no small part due to the service and dedication of the Original Travels team.

We had a thoroughly positive experience with original travels throughout. Our initial trip planning was through Abdel, who was highly responsive, very pleasant to deal with, and rapidly adapted the trip to align best with our preferences, including taking account of our young children (for instance by managing the driving distances for each leg). The same can be said of the point of contact for the trip, Said. Said was also very responsive, provided helpful answers to various ad hoc questions, and also facilitated a pottery workshop midway through the trip, which turned out to be a highlight. Said also ensured two hotel upgrades throughout the trip, which was appreciated.

Turning to our driver/guide, Samir was wonderful throughout the trip. Not only was Samir a fun companion on the long drives, he ensured our every need was met at every stage of the vacation. Of particular note were the small acts of kindness throughout the trip, such as providing snacks and water for our children, securing cough meds, and even helping resolve our kids arguments! We cannot speak highly enough of his services, and would hope to meet again in the future.

In terms of specific points on accommodations and activities, overall Original Travels arranged for very comfortable accommodations and a range of fascinating activities. The accommodations we enjoyed the most was Kasbah Azul in Agdz (fantastic staff, food and ambience), as well as Riad Pachavana in Marrakech (lovely peaceful Riad, with delicious breakfast). We would also highlight Dar Rihana in Boulmane Dades as being lovely and glad we stayed there.

For improvement in the future, we felt that the desert camp (Orient Desert Camp) had a ‘transactional’ feel as compared with other hotels we stayed at. Whilst a lovely location and comfortable camp, it had a less personable atmosphere from the staff. We also much
preferred the atmosphere of the Riad in Marrakech rather than the hotel we stayed in Marrakech’s New Town (which did not give any particular flavor of Morocco and could have been anywhere), so would recommend use of the Riads where possible.

Of the activities we participated in, particular highlights were the pottery workshop mentioned above - the owner was so welcoming and hospitable and we had a fantastic time. Also the desert camel ride was amazing, though it would have been better had we arrived slightly earlier so as not to be rushed onto the camels to make the sunset. We also thoroughly enjoyed our Marrakech food tour, and would recommend that to fellow travellers.

Generally the guides used by Original Travels were very good, though we would note the following slight caveats:
- Our guide in Ait Benhaddou put the least effort in, and generally just took us to a range of stores to buy things from his friends. Was more preoccupied with catching up with his friends rather than actually guiding the tour.
- The tour of marrakech guide did not adapt his general spiel to better fit our young kids
- The guide in Merzouga didn’t speak much English, which made communication difficult.
- We would’ve appreciated if guides took more initiative with taking photos in the moment instead of us finding a spot and doing a posed photo.

That said, all of our guides (indeed all of the people we met in Morocco!) were welcoming and friendly, and did provide special experiences.

Overall, we are extremely glad we chose Original Travels and Morocco for our vacation, and would strongly recommend for other travellers!

Our Morocco vacation was amazing and memorable! Our driver/guide Faissel was ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ He made our vacation run smoothly and was thoughtful, easy to be with and made sure my husband, son and I had everything we needed! We would never have been able to have the vacation we did without Faissel!!
The whole Kimkim experience was excellent and I look forward to using them to plan another vacation.
The private tours, accommodations and recommendations were all on point. We really had a wonderful time!

The overall experience of Morocco was exceptional and far beyond our expectations. The scenic beauty, the hospitality and Moroccan food was something we enjoyed to the utmost.
Our local driver cum guide Suffiane was an amazing person, who was always extremely helpful and guided us in best possible manner.
The other driver Osama, who remained with us for last couple of days of our tour, was also very supportive and helpful.
We look forward to coming back to Morocco with our kids.
The Kimkim team lead by Abdellah extended every possible help in arranging our trip and ultimately we had the most amazing tour of our lives.

We liked the agenda and all the places that were arranged to see and do. We loved Morocco, people were great and food was good too. Our guide/driver, Ilyace, was excellent and he had very good command of English language which we greatly appreciated. We strongly recommend his services. All other guides were good too, Hamid at Volubilis and Sharif in Fez were really knowledgeable and informative. Saleh (Marrakech), Ashraf (food tour) and Hassan (Essaouira) were also good. We were sorry we had too many samples before we got the main course and we could not enjoy it as much, but it was very good food tour. We also enjoyed the visit to Yasmin’s family and dinner. As for the tour of Hassan II Mosque, group tour guide was not really that good, they need better tour guides. As for the hotels, I assume they were amongst the best for their locations! Our favorites were Hotel Le Medina (Essaouira) and Lina (Chefchaouen) very high standards, we also liked Palais Sebban. The rest were acceptable but could make some minor improvements to the details. Our favorite city was Chefchaouen. In summary the trip a was very good experience and we appreciate all the help and planning by the team.

Hotel Reviews

Barceló Casablanca

Casablanca

Good hotel for one night stay.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Riad Mokhtar Tanger

Tangier

Very comfortable and roomy. Nice location and some views. Close to shops and restaurants.

Authenticity & Character

Great set up with a sitting room.

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Lina Ryad & Spa

Chefchaouen

Amazing place, great location, great dinner.

Authenticity & Character

Location

In the heart of activities.

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Riad Braya

Fes Medina

I would give it 3.5 stars. It was comfortable, the A/C did not work and it was not fixed. Bath tub was deep and tall and challenging to get in and out.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Not really convenient to local market.

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Kasbah Hôtel Xaluca Arfoud

Erfoud

Excellent set up, beautiful garden, pool, restaurant and bar, it was an amazing place in the area. Unfortunately the shower did not have any warm water or water pressure.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

It was very clean, could not take a shower due to lack of water.

Riad Ksar Ighnda

Ait Benhaddou

Nice place, the only problem was the A/C remote did not work, needed battery, they eventually found some.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Palais Sebban

Marrakech

Nice hotel great location, very good restaurant.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Hotel Le Medina Essaouira Thalassa Sea & Spa MGallery

Essaouira

5+++ stars, beautiful set up, awesome location, beautiful architecture, great restaurant for breakfast.

Authenticity & Character

Great architecture.

Location

By the ocean and close to all activities.

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Guided Tour of Fez Medina

Fes

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Our guide in Fez, Sharif was excellent. He was very knowledgeable and informative.

Transport

Private Transfer from Marrakech to Enchanting Essaouira

Morocco

Quality of Experience

Food

Not applicable.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Quick Tour of Casablanca with your Driver-guide

Morocco

Need better group tour guides at Hassan iI mosque.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Our driver Ilyace was great and his command of English was vey helpful.

Transport

Guided tour of Hassan II Mosque

Morocco

Liked the mosque but the tour guide was very poor and uninformative.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Driver was great, mosque group tour guide was poor.

Transport

Drive from Tangier to Chefchaouen via Hercules Caves, Tetouan & the Rif Mountains

Morocco

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Chefchaoeun to Fez via Volubilis, Moulay Idriss & Meknes

Morocco

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

The local guide Hamid was very knowledgeable.

Transport

Dine with a local family

Morocco

Yassin and family were very nice, and we enjoyed our visit very much, the food was unbelievable.

Quality of Experience

The family was very friendly and very very nice. Appreciate their time and hospitality.

Food

Excellent food and company.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Ait Benhaddou to Marrakech via Tizi N'Tichka pass

Morocco

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Half-Day Guided Tour of Marrakech

Marrakesh

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

The local guide Saleh was very good.

Transport

Guided Tour of Majorelle Garden

Marrakesh

It was ok.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

No local guide. Did not need one.

Transport

Marrakesh Evening Food Tour

Marrakesh

The tour was excellent, even with the rain. Had too many samples before the main course.

Quality of Experience

Food

All the food presented dusting the tour.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Ashraf (aka H) was very good and informative.

Transport

Guided Tour of Essaouira

Essaouira

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Hassan did a great job.

Transport

Essaouira to Casablanca via Eljadida & Safi Coastal Route

Morocco

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Our 9-day family vacation in Morocco exceeded our expectations. Our main guide and driver, Tarik, was exceptionally accommodating, friendly and knowledgeable. Our experience was tailored to exactly what we needed- 3 days of moderate hiking in the Atlas mountains, with highlights in Marrakesh, Fes and Chefchaouen. Local guides in Imlil, Fes, Marrakesh and Volubilis brought so much to maximize our experience. Our accommodations were charming and comfortable, and the provided meals were great. There's nothing we would change, but to be able to spend more time in Morocco.

Activity Review

Imlil Valley Walk - Toubkal NP

Imlil

Our local guide, Aziz, was friendly and helpful and made our experience just wonderful. This walk between Berber villages was a highlight of our trip!

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Our driver and now friend Ayoub made our entire experience easy peasy lemon squeezey. He intentionally included my 16 year-old in the entire journey. From Marrakech to Rabat, we laughed and joked and listened to great music. We are now big fans of the Gnawa music.

My son loved the Sahara from the camels to ATVs. I enjoyed the High Atlas Mountains from the hiking through the canyons near the Monkey Fingers to the bird watching.

The guides along the way were exceptional / especially our food guide in Marrakesh, Said in the High Atlas with his adorable daughter Sarah, and Sherif in Fes.

I appreciated Ayoub arranging a special shoe shopping mission with our Fes dinner host. Speaking of, after our dinner in Fes our gracious hosts (the father, wife, her sister, the grandmother and two teenage girls) pulled us into a neighbors’ engagement party where we were totally embraced in laughter and dance like I have never experienced before.

I hope all visitors experience the joy we did.

Hotel Review

Orient Desert Camp

Merzouga

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Marrakesh Evening Food Tour

Marrakesh

Our food guide was very knowledgeable about the history, customs and circumstances behind all we tasted and explored.

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Hike through Berber Villages

Morocco

Said and his family were delightful. I was not feeling my best but Said made the hike very enjoyable and we took frequent breaks.

Quality of Experience

Food

I loved eating with Said’s family and meeting his baby daughter Sarah. It was a lively experience.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Where do I begin?! Our trip to Morocco started off amazing with our driver, Samir, waiting for us outside the airport. He immediately started telling us all about Morocco and the cities we would be visiting - it was so nice to see how excited he was for us to discover his country.

We didn’t have a lot of time in the country, so we drove a lot to try to fit as many places as possible into our itinerary. Abdel and Said were so accommodating to help us plan our trip. I’ve traveled a lot in my life, and this was one of the easiest vacations I’ve ever planned — and one of the most enjoyable. We never had to fret about any details, and the itinerary was customized exactly for us.

We had an amazing guide in Fez, Shamir, who took us to all the good spots in the Medina and taught us about life in the old city. He knew the neighborhood baker, the man who kept the fires burning for the hammam, and all kinds of shopkeepers. We truly would have been lost without him.

Next, we went to the desert and took a camel ride over sunset to get to our camp. This was a very unique experience as we don’t have dunes like this in America. The stargazing was epic, and the Amazigh men working at the camp put on a nighttime drumming show for us. Youssef, Hamid, and Hassan were delightful!

In the mountains, our guide Said took us on a very cool hike where we wound up climbing trees and he showed us all of the plants (thyme, oleander, olives, figs, rosemary) in the region. After the hike, we had the most incredible dinner at the hotel, Dar Rihana Dades.

We then made it to Marrakech where we had a fantastic female guide, Hanan. She was the best, telling us about how she came to be a guide and showing us all parts of the city and palaces. Hanan told us about what its like to be a women in Morocco, which was an interesting perspective that we hadn’t heard yet - and as two female travelers, that was important to us.

My only regret on this whole trip was that we didn’t have enough time. We desperately want to come back, and when we do, we want Samir! I have to praise him one last time because he was such a big part of our trip and we loved having him with us.

Hotel Reviews

Palais Sebban

Marrakech

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

The Riad was very clean, but both nights there was a lot of yelling in the street outside our window which woke us up.

Tiziri Luxury Camp

Merzouga

We spent one night here and loved the service, food, and the stargazing! The trip to the camp via camel was a very fun experience that I’d like to do again.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Dar Rihana Dades

Douar Aït Ouffi

We are the best dinner at this hotel!

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Riad Salam Fes

Fes

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Half-Day Guided Tour of Marrakech

Marrakesh

Hanan was incredible. I only wish we had more time with her!

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Sunrise hot air balloon ride in Marrakech

Marrakesh

The actual balloon experience was fun, but it seemed like the company was not well-equipped with the wind. It was already quite windy when we arrived and the team had not started to inflate the balloon. After an hour of waiting and getting into the balloon basket, the team decided it was too windy to go up. We then moved to another spot and went up fine, but it seemed like they should have made the call to move spots earlier in the process. This made us late to our next activity.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

The driver was uncommunicative and didn’t get us back in time for our next activity despite us telling him when we needed to be back.

Transport

The driver spent a lot of time talking to his friends while we stood around waiting for him. He also never gave us any updates with the wind situation.

Hike with a Local Guide in Dades Valley

Morocco

We really liked the hike that we did in the Dades Valley. It was a great experience walking with a local guide in a beautiful part of Morocco.

Transfer from Fes to Merzouga via Erfoud & Camel Ride

Morocco

The camel ride was amazing! Being in the desert was incredible, and I only wish we had more time there.

We had a great trip to Morocco with KimKim via local company Original Travels. They helped us figure out our itinerary based on what activities we were looking for and took care of all the coordination, but remained flexible if we wanted to do additional activities on the trip. We were able to add on last minute tours and hammam experiences just the day before and all the logistics were seamless. We were running late from one activity on our last day, contacted the company and everything was immediately shifted around to fit everything in on an updated schedule. Their help saved us so much time and stress in terms of trip-planning, and the stops along the drives were more helpful in understanding local culture and life and we would have missed them if not for the agency.

Further, as two single female travelers, our driver Samir was wonderful and made us feel extremely safe and also helped teach us about Moroccan culture as we drove. He was wonderful in terms of both information and tips about where to eat and best practices for shopping and exploring. Our guides were so knowledgeable and friendly at every stop, tailoring information and recommendations to our interest while ensuring we got a full experience despite a condensed time schedule. We loved our tour with Hanan in Marrakech because it was informative but also was so wonderful having a female tour guide for an all-female group! We last minute asked for a guide (just the night before) for Fez and were lucky enough to tour with Sharif, who he was funny, informative, a cat-lover much like ourselves. We also hiked in Boumalne Dades with Said, who taught us about use of plants/herbs growing along the trail. The hike was quite unique, somewhat Arches-meets-the-Narrows and was a nice change of pace after a few long drives.

We loved all of our stops, highlights of the trip included bargaining for a rug in the Fez medina, seeing the local pottery collective in Fez, sunset over the Merzouga dunes and then stargazing, hiking in Boumalne Dades, and our tour with Hanan in Marrakech. I did not fully know what to expect going to Morocco and exploring beyond the major cities, but was truly so impressed by the welcoming people we met and look forward to coming back. Kimkim/original travels made our trip so seamless, stress free, and safe. I definitely look forward to coming back in the future for a deeper exploration of north Morocco and the mountains.

Special thanks to the people who made our trip amazing- Abdullah, Said, Samir, Sharif, Said, and Hanan.

Activity Reviews

Transfer from Fes to Merzouga via Erfoud & Camel Ride

Morocco

Long drive but so glad we went! The dunes were so beautiful, camels were amazing and glad to be able to talk to the guide a bit about nomad culture. Wish we could have stayed longer to get a bit more time in the dunes and a longer visit with the nomads, but our trip was on a tight schedule.

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

I have nothing but amazing things to say about Samir, our driver! He was so helpful and informative, and I like that the drives were always broken up with a few interesting stops.

Hike with a Local Guide in Dades Valley

Morocco

This hike was beautiful and so nice after a long day of driving! Our local guide Said taught us about local herbs along the way and talked to us about life in smaller towns.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Sunrise hot air balloon ride in Marrakech

Marrakesh

The actual ride was very beautiful, but the logistics of the company that morning were a bit off, taking two hours to get the balloon up and then delaying in the return to Marrakech. Luckily our guide in Marrakech was flexible and we got a full day of touring and hammam in even with the delay.

Quality of Experience

Experience took 5 hours from pick up to drop off due to delays with the balloon and transport from the balloon company

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

We missed Samir who had always been punctual and cognizant of the next activity.

Half-Day Guided Tour of Marrakech

Marrakesh

Hanan was amazing! Loved having a female guide as our other guides had been men, and she was so informative and fun to hang out with!

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Transfer to Marrakech via Roses Valley, Ouarzazate, Aït Benhaddou & Atlas Mountains.

Morocco

I like that the drive was broken up a bit. Loved that the rose co-op was all female run. The movie tour was a little long but overall cool to see. Loved Ait Benhaddou and great place to grab lunch before the drive to Marrakech. I also am so glad we stopped at the argon oil co-op as the products were reliable!

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport